Friday, February 23
The missing side from Remedy House is the side of the only people I have spoken to at the place. I hope to be able to speak to them again some day.
I caught today from Buffalo Rising that they are closing Remedy House[1]. "Caught" meaning that Instagram's non-chronological feed brought this to me two days after the publishing date, and "they" being the people who own it.
I have never met the people who owned Remedy House. I have spoken to the people who worked the counter. That is generally the point of interaction for most people who enter cafés like that. I will have to take the word of the reporter when they say what caused the place to close.
I have lived on the west side of the city now for almost eight months. I have very much enjoyed my time in the city, even including that my residential street, within five minutes walking to Five Points, saw two (2) plows come through during our snow week in January. I feel safe here as someone who is queer. I enjoy being able to simply walk to places when I need something. It's pretty good!
That Five Points intersection must rest on major ley lines of carbohydrates that radiate through western New York. Butter Block, Five Points Bakery, and what was Remedy House all right there. Cities used to be like that all the time!
Getting away from my point.
Mentioned in the article about a small business closing is that one of the contributing factors was a unionization drive by the employees, which raised costs.
"Remedy House also experienced issues with unionization, which can be difficult for such a boutique business."
The article contains no quotes, but from the contents it seems that the views of the former owners as well as the landlord of the property are present. Absent are the views of the former employees. There is mention that former managerial employees are talking with the landlord to reopen a new business in the space. I wish them luck, since it is a nice one!
This is happening at the same time Elmwood Taco and Subs is Going Through It[2] with their union busting tactics. There is a documentary produced about it by the workers which you can find at boycottets.com The employees at the AKG are attempting to unionize as well, which you can find at akgworkers.org. The Lexington Co-op workers successfully unionized in August. The national Starbucks union fight started here in this city. Those workers fought alongside the movement inside of Spot Coffee.
I guess it was the tone of the Buffalo Rising piece. 'A shame really, but those entrepreneurs will soon be back on their feet making more business.' If that brief, ethereal string of thought to unionization=business is harder was put to paper, it is very short work to step back to look only at the neighborhood of Elmwood and the neighborhood of the West Side and see a pattern of labor. That pattern should make one inquire, at the very least to speak to the workers and see about their efforts to unionize. What were the conditions there? Where there common concerns across these other stories.
Buffalo Rising has done it before! Maybe there will be an article coming on that. If there is, it will be only the second article to be tagged with Labor at the publication. The singular article is about the AKG[3]. That article did quote employees and the director. It also mentioned the museums major donor Jeffrey Gundlach saying that if the museum unionized it would force it to close.
The tone of that article was distant and objective. Both sides have things to say. Ah. Well. If both sides have things to say, then both sides have things to say. The missing side from Remedy House is the side of the only people I have spoken to at the place. I hope to be able to speak to them again some day. At the very least, maybe I could read their view from them in a publication soon.
Newell Nussbaumer, “Remedy House Closes @ Five Points, with a Silver Lining,” Buffalo Rising, February 21, 2024, https://www.buffalorising.com/2024/02/remedy-house-closes-five-points-with-a-silver-lining/. ↩︎
“ETS Boycott Continues,” Instagram, February 18, 2024, https://www.instagram.com/p/C3fmbFhuZZf/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA. ↩︎
“The Evolution and Current Landscape of Union Efforts at AKG Art Museum,” Buffalo Rising, January 5, 2024, https://www.buffalorising.com/2024/01/the-evolution-and-current-landscape-of-union-efforts-at-akg-art-museum/. ↩︎